


The Man in the Gabardine Suit

by aetataureate



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Pranks and Practical Jokes, The future is now, bucky barnes vs. the surveillance state, this isn't crack you cowards
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-04-06 00:49:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19051891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aetataureate/pseuds/aetataureate
Summary: “Steve?” Bucky asks, still facing out onto their living room. “Do you see our wallpaper?”Steve turns around. The situation in the living room is the same as the situation in the entryway. “Yeah.”“Have you seen the photos. On our wallpaper. Before?”“Yeah,” says Steve, the rising panic into his gut transmuting into something equally difficult to suppress.“Oh,” says Bucky as Steve starts to lose it, his laughter echoing off walls covered floor-to-ceiling with photos of Bucky’s contorted face. “Oh, no.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jupiter2012](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jupiter2012/gifts).



> _Laughing on the bus, playing games with the faces._  
>  _She said the man in the gabardine suit was a spy._  
>  _I said be careful, his bow tie is really a camera._  
>  “America,” Simon & Garfunkel

### September 2014

Five months into the search for Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes—formerly declared MIA, then presumed KIA, now POW, AWOL, DUSTWUN, whatever they want to call him—Steve Rogers is bone-tired.

“Captain Rogers to the command center, Rogers to the command center,” a neutral voice announces over the intercom. Steve sighs and levers himself out of his chair, knee popping uncomfortably. He should have probably gone to the physical therapist that Natasha recommended after the last time it got completely blown out by a magic laser, or whatever. He _is_ going to the emotional therapist that Sam recommended, though, and that seems like enough assisted healing for the year, or possibly the millenium. The knee will get better, or it won’t.

They called him up for a Bucky sighting, of course. Steve used to get an enormous thrill with every Bucky sighting, and it kills him a little that they’re becoming routine. There are only so many raised hopes and blurry satellite images and unsuccessful raids and dashed expectations he can suffer through, though, so he bears the leveling-out with something approximating grace. He still trudges up the stairs to the command center for the umpteenth time this week, because it’s _Bucky_ , and because each time they’ve sighted him for the last few weeks he’s been getting closer, and the sightings have been getting—stranger.

The command center is filled with members of Tony’s geek squad, their heads bowed over their keyboards. There’s an undercurrent of frantic noise, a combination of furious typing and incomprehensible muttering into headsets. The still images are projected larger-than-life across the monitors lining every wall. Everywhere he turns, Steve sees Bucky staring back at him.

“What is he doing?” Sam asks from somewhere over Steve’s shoulder. He’s peering up at the monitors too, much less irritably than Steve himself is.

Tony spins around in his chair with great relish. It is Steve’s private opinion that he is getting far too much enjoyment out of having promoted himself to Head Geek of the operation, but he hasn’t mentioned this to Tony. He needs his help too badly to piss him off. “No idea. Seriously, none. Is it possible he’s had a stroke? Some kind of seizure?”

“I don’t _think_ so,” says Bruce. “But I can’t know for sure. Too many variables at play here—nothing medical is going to look the same on him as anything I’ve ever seen before. I would repeat my suggestion that we get a real doctor in here to consult, but—”

“No,” says Steve. “No one else.”

“—I suspected Steve would say that,” Bruce finishes.

“It’s the same thing in Canberra, Mumbai, Beirut, Lisbon…” Natasha says, flicking her fingers to get the photos to zoom across the front wall in a way that Steve has yet to master. He watches larger-than-life images whoosh past him like train cars in the subway platform, Bucky’s contorted expression trapped behind the glass of each one. What are you _doing_ with your _face_ , Steve wonders. If Mrs. Barnes had been alive, she would have told him it would freeze that way.

“Well, one thing’s for sure,” Tony says. “Entry through the Port of Miami, then Jacksonville, Richmond, D.C., and the New Jersey Turnpike.”

“ _Miami_?” says Steve, hard-earned placidity immediately forgotten. “To _New Jersey_? Why didn’t you let me know as soon as he made landfall in the US?”

“We didn’t want you to do anything stupid,” Natasha says. “And look, that’s turning out super well for us. You’re welcome.”

“He’s heading straight for New York,” Sam says.

Tony nods grimly. “This time, we got him.”

### Present Day

For Steve’s last meal as a full member of the Avengers, ostensibly a joint celebration of his semi-retirement, Sam’s promotion to Captain America, and Bucky’s promotion to certified not-sleeper-agent and individual stable enough to live outside the most secure building in Manhattan, Tony throws a party. The party is, for once, less than fully ridiculous—Steve didn’t even have to intervene on his own or Bucky’s behalf, although he was prepared to. Tony, he suspects, has been mellowed out by the past couple of years. They all have been. Instead of dodging showgirls, senators, or a combination of the two, Steve gets to hang out with his team and drink good wine.

Steve is proud of his friends. Natasha, never one to be afraid of responsibility, has settled into his old leadership role with the same grace he’s been depending on for years, and he hasn’t once second-guessed passing command authority to her. Tony is using the suits’ autonomous capabilities more and more, in a way that Steve thinks is both extremely healthy and long overdue. The new kids on the team are getting along nicely, coming up under a lot less pressure than Steve’s cohort did. They have more time. It feels like a gift. Steve is—happy, he thinks.

And this _dinner_. As much as Steve is excited to leave—as much as leaving has been the object of his obsessive focus for the past two years—their last meal while living together under one roof feels very final. Since he got out of the ice, nearly every meal he’s eaten has been with some combination of these people, in these now-familiar spaces. As much as it’s exactly what he wants, leaving this bubble of companionship feels a bit like coming untethered from the earth. This dinner is what he needed, he thinks. What he’s needed at every stage of his life when leaving was imminent, and never actually gotten before. He can feel Natasha in the alcohol, Sam in the music, Clint in the food, and Tony in the strange mood lighting. And Bucky—

Steve can feel Bucky where his hand is migrating slowly up Steve’s inseam under the table.

“Steve’s trapped in his own head again,” Bucky announces to the room at large, where everyone's attempting to pull themselves together after Natasha snorted vodka out of her nose laughing at her own joke. Sam, whom Tony had spent the last three hours getting deliberately and comprehensively drunk on the pretext that the last weekend before he was Captain America was also the last weekend it was acceptable for him to spend too hungover to physically function, had fallen all the way out of his chair.

“Isn’t that more your area?” Tony asks, dodging a bit of caramelized onion that Clint flings his way.

Bucky flips him off, and it’s a testament to how far their relationship has progressed that Tony laughs. Ignoring the way Steve kicks him under the table, Bucky says, “I’m thinking it’s our sign that we should head out soon. But first, Wilson, Steve and I got something for you.”

“I let you _live_ in my _home_ for _years_ , and this is the thanks I get?” Tony complains. “A present for Sam?”

“Our present to you was that we gave Bruce those blood samples,” Steve points out.

“It’s true,” Bruce says soberly. “You were almost disgustingly happy that they gave me their blood.”

“I really was,” Tony muses.

“Anyway,” says Bucky, holding out a shiny paper bag with a grin. “Sam, this is from us. Congratulations, Cap.” The _CONGRATULATIONS, BIRTHDAY BOY!_ written on the side of the bag has been modified to read _CONGRATULATIONS, BIRDDAY SAM!_ , and the teddy bear has been given wings and a beak.

“That is an extremely dubious pun,” says Sam. “And I can tell the one of you who _can’t_ draw did this illustration.”

“Shut up and open it,” Bucky says.

Sam rolls his eyes and tosses aside the tissue paper from the top of the bag. The martyred expression melts off his face as soon as he gets a good look at what’s inside. “Aw, Steve,” he says. “Shit, man. Y’all really gonna make me cry right here at the dinner table?”

“Share with the class,” says Natasha, and Sam pulls out a jacket. _The_ jacket, rather. Steve had it made special—well, Steve had the idea to make it special, and then Bucky took over completely because he had no faith that Steve could be trusted with the details. The end result is that the cow the leather came from got some kind of special Swedish massage every single day of its life, and it’s going to fit Sam down to the centimeter, according to the measurements Tony sent over from when he was reworking the Exo-7. The patch on the left shoulder is the shield. The patch on the right shoulder is the Howling Commandos unit patch. The fraying at the tip of the wing is the only imperfection in the whole jacket—Bucky got it from Gabe Jones’ granddaughter, who had required only the strong reassurance that Sam was the kind of man who took good care of his clothes. Clint whistles low, and Sam looks up at Steve, struck by emotion.

“It’s yours,” Steve says, slightly appalled to find himself choking over the words. “You’ve— more than earned it. And I just wanted to say— we wanted to say— thank you, for—”

“Man, now’s not the time to try to learn to use your words. Get over here and give me a hug,” Sam says, getting up to meet him halfway. He flings both arms around Steve before saying, “You too, Barnes, get over here. I know you had a hand in this.” He hugs Bucky slightly more gingerly, and, pulling away, says, “It’s possible I should be slightly nicer to you.”

“When?” asks Bucky, confused.

“Just in general,” Natasha says, loudly. “I get a hug before you go too, right?”

With that, the floodgates open. There’s a generalized chaos as drunk adults try to rearrange themselves and their chairs, and Steve finds himself on the receiving end of a deluge of physical affection.

“I might need you one day,” Natasha murmurs, kissing him on the cheek. “I want you to know that now.”

“I know,” Steve says.

“When that day comes, you can say no,” Natasha tells him, holding eye contact.

“I know. But I won’t. We won’t.”

“I know that too,” she tells him, and goes to disentangle Bucky from Clint, who’s sprawled across him like an amorous jellyfish while telling him earnestly, “From the bottom of my heart. My man. My brother. I am so glad your face did not freeze like that.”

“Like what?” Bucky asks.

“Ignore him,” Natasha says. “He’s pretty drunk.”

“Can I have Happy drive you home?” Tony asks, cutting in to shake Steve’s hand and clap him on the arm.

“Uh, no,” says Happy, looking at the cocktails he’s holding in each hand.

“Thanks, Tony. But we’ll take the subway. You’ve done— more than enough. More than I could ask of you.”

“But you did ask,” Tony says. “And I delivered.”

“You did,” says Steve. “You’re a superhero.”

“I am,” Tony grins. “C’mere, hug it out,” he says, wrapping both arms around Steve with little skill but great determination. As soon as Tony releases him, Bucky crowds Steve out the door.

“Enough dramatic goodbyes, everyone, we’ll see you next week,” he grumbles.

“Bye, everyone,” Steve grins, letting himself be guided into the elevator. He’s met with a chorus of farewells and one “Remember, someone is always watching!” followed by a round of laughs just as the door closes.

“What are they up to?” Bucky asks, selecting the button for the lobby.

“No idea,” says Steve. “But something, for sure.”

“Meh, we’ll find out when we find out. Now, c’mon, let me make out with you in this elevator.”

***

Steve lets Bucky make out with him in the elevator. He also lets Bucky make out with him under two different streetlights, the gently-falling snow glowing around them, and in the subway car after the only other passenger gets off, the F train rattling all the way out to the end of its line. He kisses Bucky as they cross over the threshold of what is, for the first time, officially their home, backs him up against the wall of their entryway and kisses him as he strips his coat off. He kisses Bucky all the way up until the moment Bucky fumbles in the dark for the light switch, flips it on, and then freezes entirely, the urge to flee evident in every single muscle of his body. Steve pulls back immediately.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, trepidation building in his gut. _Please_ , he thinks wildly. _Please let there be no one else in our house. Please don’t let us have missed something, please no more triggers. Please don’t panic and leave me when you’ve just come home_. Bucky’s mouth is moving soundlessly, and he looks absolutely stunned. “Bucky?” Steve asks, searching his face for a sign of what’s happening in his mind. He’s about to start in on their emergency protocols when he realizes that Bucky’s face is framed on all side by photos. Photos of Bucky. Photos that Steve recognizes. Steve takes a step back, baffled.

“Steve?” Bucky asks, still facing out onto their living room.

“Yeah,” says Steve.

“Do you see our wallpaper?”

Steve turns around. The situation in the living room is the same as the situation in the entryway. “Yeah.”

“Have you seen the photos. On our wallpaper. Before?”

“Yeah,” says Steve, the rising panic into his gut transmuting into something equally difficult to suppress.

“Oh,” says Bucky as Steve starts to lose it, his laughter echoing off walls covered floor-to-ceiling with photos of Bucky’s contorted face. “Oh, no.”


	2. Chapter 2

### September 2014

Barrelling down the toll-by-plate lane at a hundred and twenty kilometers an hour, Bucky reflects detachedly on the meager advantages that seventy years of fractured HYDRA training have to contribute to this escape attempt. He’s beginning to doubt the relevance of the ability to shoot the antenna off a butterfly in a hurricane to his current situation. At least twentieth-century Soviet Russia had the foresight to prepare him to operate covertly in the presence of adversarial twenty-first century technology. Or, rather, at least Colonel Gramotnev had been distractingly, unprofessionally obsessed with American science fiction and the technology of the future. Gramotnev had been a bigwig in the seventies, when Bucky—Bucky Bucky Bucky, he thinks, Bucky Barnes who broke a bunch of bumbling bureaucrats, that’s me—when Bucky was running far fewer missions than he was in the sixties, or would again in the eighties, and thus had much more free time.

In the seventies, it had become eminently clear that the whole “computers” thing was going to catch on in a big way. Gramotnev had explained about computers repeatedly, incessantly, during the awkward phase when his wife had just left him and none of the techs could figure out how to politely suggest he go home in the evenings so they could get real work done. The computers, he said, would be able to talk to each other. Just like a telephone, he insisted, if the two people on either end of the telephone could also share a brain. Bucky had taken one for the team and listened to Gramotnev natter on and on so that the lab people could do lab things and stop there from being any more explosions, and therefore, delays. It was interesting, sometimes, except Gramotnev was very taken with the idea of an interested Soldier and then Bucky had had Official Reading Lists and also Experimental Projects, which were their own form of delay, except, unfortunately, the kind without any explosions.

On the other hand, the delays were better than the late eighties and early nineties, which were in turn better than the tank, and the chair, and Y2K. Plus, Bucky now has a solid theoretical foundation in avoiding various detection, recognition, and identification systems. It may not be field-tested and centrally approved—the technology wasn’t ready in Gramotnev’s time, and after the Stark Business and the advent of the chair, there was no need for Bucky to fool anyone—but Bucky is pretty sure he can trick retinal scans with a series of carefully choreographed blinks. He can dupe gait analysis with a sort of shuffle-skip maneuver. He’s got a special accent that can defy speaker recognition, and he can blind an infrared camera using strategically-placed tin foil (with the unfortunate side effect of making himself more obvious to a normal camera, or the naked eye). The tricks Gramotnev came up with will work. He’s, like, eighty percent confident.

He can also avoid facial recognition technology. It’s not his most dignified evasion tactic, but Gramotnev had assured him it was effective. They did thought experiments. Colonel Gramotnev was pretty smart, at least until they put _him_ in the chair.

Racing up I-95, Bucky heaves a deep sigh. He crosses his eyes, twists up his lip, sticks out his tongue, contorts his eyebrows, and sets his expression to the silliest face he can muster, just in time for the cameras bridging the road to flash brightly, snapping his photograph.

### Now

Steve, who apparently has no idea how thoroughly compromised their tactical position is at this moment, has managed to choke on his own saliva from laughing too hard, and is now making a horrible hacking-slash-wheezing sound that would have scared the shit out of Bucky about seventy-five years ago. As it is, however, Bucky cannot even look down to where his horrible treasonous life partner is doubled over, hands on his knees and sounding like a gorilla on nitrous oxide, so transfixed is he by the rows upon rows of photos of his own traitor face staring back at him from every vertical surface. The situation is dire.

“Oh no,” Bucky says again, to re-emphasize the direness of the situation. Then he gapes like a fish, unable to scrounge up any more words whatsoever.

“You— the— and the— hoo boy, the, the cameras, and the— face!” says That Asshole Steve, a sentence which Bucky is ashamed to admit contains 350% more unique words than Bucky has managed thus far.

“Home— security?” he tries, more in an effort to narrow the gap than anything else.

“Clint has— the— spare key, in case of— oh, god— _emergencies_ ,” Steve says, stopping to physically gasp for air. Bucky has seen this man demolish a building without raising his pulse. Not a very well-constructed building, but still.

“Oh no,” Bucky says again, and not only because Clint’s idea of home security involves regularly getting the shit beat out of him by two-bit thugs in his own living room. “Has Clint seen these?”

“Bucky, oh, sweetheart, he definitely has,” says Steve, kicking the alarm bells in Bucky’s dumbass brain into high gear. He has a horrible, terrible thought.

“Has Tony seen these?” Steve tries to look solemn, which does not make Bucky feel better. “Has Wilson seen these?” Steve’s face is twitching uncontrollably. This is very, very bad. “Has _Natalia_ seen these?”

Natalia has seen them. Everyone, in fact, has seen them. Bucky is going to drown himself in a bog. That way, when they pull him out in a thousand years, perfectly preserved and with his luck still breathing, he will at least be able to take comfort in the fact that the photos they disseminate via brain hologram or whatever stupidly, inconveniently efficient technology they have developed by then will _not_ be the dumbest he has ever looked in front of the entire world.

***

“I’m just a little confused about why you thought that would work,” Steve says, gently. He is probably making his gentle face, too, crouched next to where Bucky has sat his ass directly down in the entryway. Bucky refuses to check, on the grounds the he would have to remove his face from the cold washcloth Steve brought from the kitchen. Bucky might be more appreciative if Steve had not overly cheerfully reported that the damage extended to their kitchen.

“I told you, Gramotnev said it would work. We _tested_ it,” Bucky says, mostly to the washcloth.

“And you fooled the facial recognition software?”

“No, asshole, it was 1976, do you think we had access to that shit? That shit that did not exist yet? It was _theoretical_.”

“Okay, so, just so we’re clear,” Steve says, like he’s on fucking Law & Order or something. “You and Grametov sat around the secret HYDRA lair watching Star Trek, and he had you practice making faces, and then told you the funniest faces would be able to fool a bunch of future technology?

“ _Gramotnev_ ,” Bucky says, through gritted teeth.

“Bucky,” says Steve. “Is it possible that Granoteev was fucking with you?”

“ _No_ ,” says Bucky, and decides to strategically omit the part of the story where he and Gramotnev spent six months running around wearing literal tin foil hats, talking like the Munchkins from Wizard of Oz and blinking in Morse code.

***

“How’d you _think_ we found you?” asks Steve. At least, that’s what Bucky thinks he asks. It’s hard to tell, as the love of his life is currently spewing out an abominable amount of toothpaste out of his mouth as he talks.

“Why in the fuck did you never learn to brush your teeth like an adult?” Bucky asks, watching Steve spit a tidal wave of toothpaste into the sink. At least he rinses it out.

“You should be pleased with my commitment to oral hygiene,” says Steve. “As the only other person with a vested interest in the bacterial colonies in my mouth.”

“Wow, this evening just keeps getting sexier,” says Bucky. After they discovered the photographic evidence of Bucky’s eternal shame was plastered across their bedroom ceiling, a masterstroke that reeked of Tony Stark, Bucky had called off all intimacy for the night, and possibly forever.

“I still think if you’re on top,” Steve began, “and I’m the only one who can look upwards…”

“Don’t finish that sentence,” Bucky says. “If I find out that you can get off looking at me looking my carefully calculated worst, I will never forgive you for the effort I’ve put into my personal appearance over the last century.”

“Right,” says Steve, “because the cumulative years of my life I have spent waiting for you to finish messing with your hair so we could fool around were for _my_ benefit. And you didn’t answer my question. How did you think we found you?”

Bucky sighs deeply. “I got my documentation to get out of South Africa from a guy called Fourie. He was mixed up in— it’s complicated, I didn’t want to use him, I knew he was gonna catch someone’s attention in a big way soon enough. But there was a hell of a lot of pressure coming out of Lesotho, and I needed good papers on a short timeline. He was the only qualified person I still had a— working relationship with, let’s say. I assumed you found me when SHIELD found him.”

“I’ve never heard of that guy,” says Steve.

“At this juncture, that is clear to me,” Bucky tells him.

“You were on camera a _lot_ ,” says Steve. “We just followed your progress up the coast.”

“I am _aware_ ,” Bucky says, and stomps into the bedroom.


	3. Chapter 3

They fix the house. The photos aren’t just wallpaper, they’re _everywhere_. They’re inside picture frames and stuck between the pages of books that Bucky leafs through angrily, muttering to himself. They’re replacing the logo on a custom-printed tube of toothpaste in a move that would reek of Natasha, were Bruce not the only one Steve has ever discussed that brand with. It’s a particularly dastardly act, given that the toothpaste is the good expensive kind and Steve can’t bring himself to throw it out. Instead, he resorts to haphazardly scribbling over the logo in Sharpie.

They double-check the house three times, then argue over whether or not to check again. Bucky, inveterate barracks lawyer and total neurotic that he is, insists that four total checks only amounts to two double-checks, fewer than the previously agreed-upon maximum limit of three. Steve, for once in his life, gives up and agrees, setting what he feels is a disquieting precedent for the future.

Even after they’ve double-checked the house _five_ times by Steve’s reasonable reckoning, three by Bucky’s rules-lawyer one and _eleven_ if you count the fact that they were _both_ checking, the photos keep sneaking up on them. A month after they move in, Steve goes to find an album for Sam’s niece’s middle-school history project (interview a World War II veteran!) and finds that Tony has had an intern or someone edit each and every picture to include what Bucky has termed his Secret Agent Moron face. Steve goes to intimidate said intern, and instead finds a very apologetic Spider-Man, who has saved the originals.

Three months after they move in, June rolls around, and they finally turn on the air conditioning. Tiny copies of the photos flutter out of the vents like confetti. Steve goes to intimidate Clint, who is not at all apologetic until Steve takes a shot in the dark and nonspecifically threatens to tell Natasha what he did.

Six months after they move in, Steve stands in the dining room he shares with Bucky. He stares at the wall, arms crossed, and the wall stares back, the same blank white it's been since they stripped and primed it.

"Bucky?" he calls.

"Yeah?"

"Could you come here a minute?”

Bucky wanders in from the kitchen, red-eyed, a knife in one hand, and with marinara sauce spattered across his undershirt.

“Why the fuck do onions still make me cry,” he grumbles.

“I can do it,” Steve offers, softly.

“Nah, I’m already done. What’s up?”

“I was just thinking, how would you feel about me painting this wall?”

Bucky considers the wall unenthusiastically. “Am I going to be the one who has to tape over all the baseboards again?”

“I mean, yes, probably.”

Bucky heaves a dramatic sigh. “I mean, yeah, of course, go for it. When have you ever known me to have an opinion on paint colors?”

“No, I mean, I want to really _paint_ it. Like a mural or something.”

“Oh! Yeah, that’d be cool. You know what you’re going to do?” Bucky asks, wandering back into the kitchen to finish butchering Italian food.

“Not yet,” says Steve, turning his attention back to the wall.

***

Steve takes his time. He’s been going to museums and galleries already—they’re quiet, and no one ever gets on his back about there being some incredibly famous painting from 1982 that he’s never seen. He starts going seriously, though, taking along biographies and books on different techniques and movements. He finds out he likes abstract expressionism, except for Cy Twombly, and hates Neo-Dadaism, except for Jasper Johns. He spends an afternoon standing in front of a Pollock before he decides he just doesn’t get it. A Japanese woman has a fashion exhibition at the Met, and he goes four times.

Steve does studies and sketches. He bothers the docents so much that one of them introduces him to Huma, who works in the gift shop and takes him to meet her artist friends, who all live together in a big loft space and make fun of Steve until he improves. He paints in the style of Andy Warhol, then in the style of Helen Frankenthaler. One day, he sits down on his stool in his creaky, sunlit attic studio and paints in the style of Steve Rogers. When he comes downstairs, Bucky throws a dishrag at him and tells him to wipe the dumb smirk off his face. Then he rolls his eyes and has extremely enthusiastic sex with him on the hallway floor.

Steve doesn’t think he was much of an artist, before. He was a professional, in that he made art and then people gave him money, which he exchanged for food and shelter in order to not die, but his head was always elsewhere. It was the same reason he wouldn’t have been much of a husband. Now, Steve thinks. Now he could do a pretty good job at both.

During the months it takes Steve to paint the mural, Bucky is effectively banned from the dining room. They eat a lot of meals on the sofa, and whenever Steve emerges from the attic carrying an unrelated painting he’s done as a palate cleanser, Bucky swears and threatens to leave if not provided with an appropriate eating surface posthaste. Steve doesn’t believe him, but he buys a couple of TV trays anyway.

When the wall is finished, Steve doesn’t make a big deal of it, just in case. He carefully removes the blue painter’s tape from around the edges and pulls the drop cloths from the floor and table, folding them neatly. Then he calls Bucky in.

“Is it ready?” Bucky asks, coming around the corner from the living room. “Oh,” he says, stopping short.

“Yeah, it’s ready,” Steve tells him, suddenly nervous.

“Oh, it’s— wow.” Bucky comes around the table, then hovers next to the wall for a moment. “Can I touch it?”

“Would it be worth anything to me if you couldn’t?”

Bucky reaches out and puts his metal palm flat against the wall, and Steve’s gut twists. The painting is a city scene from street level, crowded and alive. It’s not abstract, but it’s not _not_ abstract. Steve doesn’t have a box to put it in. It’s _then_ , and it’s also _now_ , and it’s a time Steve never saw, or hasn’t seen yet. Bucky’s in the center of it all, reaching out, and he’s a part of it. He belongs.

“Wow,” Bucky says. Removes his hand. Comes back around the table to stand beside Steve. Tilts his head. “It’s not scary. I kind of thought it would be— tortured, or something. For the catharsis.”

“Of course not. I put it in our home.”

“You put our home in it,” Bucky says, and Steve realizes that’s exactly what he did. God, he thinks, I’m in love. Bucky’s walking back and forth, looking at the painting from different angles. “I know fuck-all about art, but… This is something special, isn’t it? Like, this could be in a museum.”

“Yeah,” says Steve, knowing it could be.

“But not for a long time, right? For now, it’s just ours.”

“Yeah. It’s just ours.”


	4. Chapter 4

Bucky slams into the mat back-first, then stares up at the ceiling tiles, regretting his own existence.

“That really hurt,” he tells the unforgiving fluorescent lighting.

“Don’t be a baby,” Natalia says. It’s not unforgiving so much as scathing.

“You don’t understand,” he explains halfheartedly. “When we turn my arm off, I can’t control where it goes when you throw me.”

“I understand that perfectly, actually. It was kind of the point of this session.”

“Natalia, I’m telling you, you physically can’t understand. I just got hit in the dick with my own, extremely heavy, _metal_ arm.”

Natalia considers this. “Hm. Nice,” she says, and flounces off in the direction of the locker room. Bucky sighs and powers his arm back on.

The communal locker room adjoining the combatives gym is one of the rare areas of the Avengers compound where Tony Stark has no interest in spending his time, which means it’s uniquely aesthetically uninspiring. America Chavez told him once that it looked just like her high school gym’s locker room had, which is how Bucky found out that high school gyms bear a strong resemblance to Soviet prison yards. Bucky’s sitting on the central bench, lacing up his boots and quietly bemoaning the way that everything placed inside the guest lockers emerges slightly and unpleasantly damp. He’s thinking about asking for his own dedicated space back, as often as he comes up to help with training and keep himself sharp, when Natalia comes out from the showers. She’s in a big shapeless bathrobe, her hair wrapped up in a towel and some kind of purple gunk smeared all over her face. Her shower shoes are squeaking on the floor.

“That’s a weird overall look,” Bucky says. “Like a low-budget alien.”

“Speaking of,” Natalia says, “don’t run out on me right away, I want to talk to you about something.”

“Wait, what were we speaking of?”

“This is going to take a minute,” Natalia says, gesturing vaguely at her face. “You can head up to the mess, I know a dedicated space for eating is an exciting luxury for you.”

“Hey, I’ll have you know that Steve let me back in the dining room,” Bucky objects, but he wanders out to hunt down some food.

Natalia finds him a while later in one of the common areas, demolishing a California wrap and giving Kamala Khan a couple of the pointers that Bucky would categorize as “life-saving” but Wilson deemed “age-inappropriate, legally dubious, and disturbing” and removed from the training calendar. Steve might be leaning hard into the “retired” schtick, but Bucky knows they’re a hell of a lot more like the Ready Reserve. When the day comes, there’s no way on God’s green earth he’s letting Steve step out with a generation of Avengers that no one bothered to teach the hard lessons.

“I made your gross smoothie,” Bucky says, pointing to the ridiculously oversized blender bottle on the table next to him.

“Did you remember the—”

“Bizarre and disgusting fish oil, yes.”

“Thanks. Kamala, could I borrow Bucky for a bit?”

“Sure! Thanks for the advice, Sergeant Barnes,” Kamala chirps, and skips off to wherever young people go these days. See, Bucky thinks, not traumatized at all. Suck it, Sam.

Natalia leads him up to one of the conference centers, folding herself into a seat opposite him. The purple gunk has made her face look oddly smooth and plasticky. She’s ignoring her smoothie entirely. Bucky frowns. “Everything okay?”

“James,” Natalia says, meeting his gaze. “There’s something you need to understand.” 

“What is it?” he asks, something ugly settling in his stomach. Their history is different from everyone else’s, and very like each other’s. Any problem that requires the two of them to solve won’t be of the straightforward, righteous variety.

Natalia takes a deep breath. “Facial recognition technology works by measuring the distance between various—”

“Oh my god, please leave me alone,” says Bucky.

“No, sit back down. This is important. I’ve prepared slides.”

There are a lot of slides. Some of the slides contain important information, most of which Bucky is embarrassed he didn’t already know, though in his defense no one ever bothered to tell him. The rest are completely useless, dominated by increasingly byzantine diagrams that are how Bucky knows this lecture is a punishment for his incompetence. Natalia knows how he feels about PowerPoint.

“Now,” Natalia says, clicking past the slide that says QUESTIONS?? in yellow font on a pink background. The new slide says _PRACTICAL DEMONSTRATION!!!!!_. Bucky, who had been getting up to leave, flops back into his chair with a groan that he hopes conveys both resignation and exasperation. “I’m going to teach you how to fool facial recognition software using only supplies you can buy at Wal-Mart.”

The supplies Bucky can buy at Wal-Mart turn out to be clown makeup, hair gel, three t-shirts, and a pair of jeans that might fit Bucky should he choose to pursue an alternative career as a sumo wrestler. “When were these _cool_?” Bucky asks, looking down at his new outfit, a little awed despite himself.

“These? Never,” Natalia tells him. “They were desperately uncool in about 2005. You see how the color-blocking interrupts—”

“The planes of the face, yeah. But Nat, I’m gonna stick out like a sore thumb in this. I might as well pull on a ski mask and preserve a little dignity.”

“What do you do when you see a guy in a ski mask?”

“Keep an eye on him, I guess. Call the cops, if I’m a bank teller.”

“And what do you do if you see a guy dressed like this?”

Bucky considers himself in the mirror. His hair is gelled into aggressive spikes across the top half of his face, and the bottom half is strategically concealed by a series of colorful triangles over a base layer of white greasepaint. His legs have been swallowed entirely by his jeans, and if he squints, he can tell that the squiggles across his chest read BLOODBATH.

“I would avoid looking at me or talking to me or thinking about me as much as possible,” he admits reluctantly.

“Exactly. Now, smile,” Natalia says, and snaps his photo.

She takes a lot of pictures. Some of them she uses to demonstrate how the downmarket cyberpunk look he’s rocking stops JARVIS from picking out his features reliably enough to recognize his face. It’s cool, but while Bucky may be an idiot, he’s no fool. There’s no way that many photos were necessary for proof of concept. Natalia is very accomplished at blackmail.

Steve is sitting on the couch when he gets home. “Hey, how was it?” he asks.

“Absolutely normal and regular,” Bucky says, loudly. Steve blinks.

“Okay,” he says. “You have paint behind your ear.”

***

When the day finally comes that Natalia needs them, it’s not as bad as Bucky expected.

That it could have been worse feels like small comfort, he reflects, watching blood and grime and oil-black _something_ sluice off himself and down the shower drain. It still wasn’t good. He catches a whiff of something bad-awful-wrong and fumbles for the fancy scented guest soap, lathering it everywhere in an attempt to cover the smell. The state he’s in, he manages to knock the spare razor off its ledge, and the sight and the thought of it are too much. He sits down in the bottom of the tub and lets the water pour over him.

Steve took a hit in the fight—not a stupid one, just an unlucky one. It didn’t even knock him down—the dumb fucker used his bowling-ball momentum to plow right through it. But Bucky saw it—a huge slice into his right thigh, almost surgical-looking. If he’d seen it on an operating table, he’d have called it an anterolateral incision. It was the kind of cut that meant you could see how the leg worked underneath.

Bucky doesn’t like considering how Steve’s body works, what keeps it pumping and moving. He wants Steve to be a law of the universe, observable but immutable. He doesn’t want him to have tendons that connect how everyone else’s tendons connect.

God, Bucky thinks, I’m shit out of luck. That having been determined, he stands up, finishes his shower, and goes to find the people who have colonized his home. He knows Sam is staying with them, since if he went back to the Avengers compound right now mercury toxicity would kill him dead, and the slightest pretense turns him and Steve into giggling first-graders having their first sleepover. It sounds like Natalia’s come by to talk to Steve as well. Bucky can hear her voice floating softly upwards as he makes his way downstairs.

“— _centralized threat consisting of extraterrestrial, technological, or paranormal elements beyond the scope of expertise of conventional forces, and having immediate and wide-ranging global impacts_ —”

“— _requires a response in kind. I know, Natasha. I helped write it, you don’t have to quote it to me_.” Steve sounds tired. Maybe a little on edge, but mostly tired. Not in pain. Bucky comes around the corner into the living room and sees him sitting sideways on the couch. Clint is perched on the arm of Natalia’s chair, and one of the new kids—fuck, is the guy’s name Billy? Dave? Anyway, one of Sam’s ducklings is hovering awkwardly behind his spot on the other side of the couch. It’s a lot of people for their little living room. Steve sees Bucky come in and gives him a tight smile, goes to move his leg to give him space in the middle. Bucky shakes his head minutely, lets their conversation wash over him without processing it.

“I know, Steve, which is why I’m frustrated. I can’t read your mind on this one.”

Steve blows out a sigh. “I’m not mad. Just let me… She was a little girl, you know? She was a child.”

“And that’s why we—”

“I know, I know. I’m not angry, I just. There was a cost here.”

“I know.”

“I know y— we’re going in circles. It’s okay, I’m good. I just don’t know what I think, Nat. You asked me what I wanted. I want to be sure. I miss being sure.”

“That makes sense to me. I’m sorry,” Natalia offers, and Steve tilts his head back into the couch. Relaxes a little. He’s still damp from the shower, and he’s bouncing his right leg restlessly, bandage visible under soft, loose shorts. Mostly healed already. No pain. Bucky can picture the muscle fibers contracting, ligaments binding the bones together. He feels sick.

“I’m gonna— snacks,” he says, scaring the shit out of Wilson’s duckling, who hadn’t noticed him yet. He ducks into the kitchen, opens the fridge, sees a package of drumsticks, slams it shut, and keeps going into the dining room, where there are no upsetting visuals or people. He leans on the table and takes some deep breaths, letting his eyes roam over Steve’s painting, which always settles him. He likes not having to tell what everyone is. He loosens up enough to relinquish his grip on the shreds of his dignity and do what he really wants to do, which is sit his ass down on their dining room table and not think for a minute, even though he’s always telling Steve that there should be no intersection whatsoever between sitting surfaces and eating surfaces.

He’s looking over the painting sort of absently, letting his brain unwind and become receptive to his impressions of the universe or whatever, when suddenly one of the swirls resolves into a familiar, horrifying pattern.

“Steve,” he says, low and urgently.

Steve hears him, because Steve always hears him, and three milliseconds later he comes crashing into the room like a rhinoceros on speed.

“Are you okay? Are you hurt? Why are you sitting on the table?” he asks, and Bucky rolls his eyes.

“ _I’m_ fine,” he says. “You, on the other hand, are in _trouble_.”

“He’s fine, right?” Wilson calls from the other room. Bucky has a lot of respect for his “don’t get off the couch until the emergency is confirmed” policy. It’s the reason he’s going to outlast Steve by a factor of ten, probably.

“Yeah,” Steve responds. “I’m the one you should be worried about, it seems.”

“In that case, I’m drinking your whiskey,” Natasha yells.

“Steven Grant,” Bucky says, summoning with all his might the ghost of Sarah Rogers. “Explain yourself.”

“Well, I was in the living room, talking to Natasha—”

“What is _this_.”

“It’s our painting,” Steve says cheerfully.

“Right,” says Bucky, “and what is _that_.”

“Oh,” says Steve. “That part is you.”

“That part is me _what_ ,” Bucky says flatly. He’s using his best murder voice, despite the fact that it has worked on Steve precisely never. He’s also pointing directly at what appears to be a faithful, if somewhat abstracted, representation of one his moments of lowest self-respect and highest indignity. Steve has frozen his face _like that_.

Steve says, “It’s you coming home to me.” 

Bucky stares at Steve. Steve’s face is balanced on the razor’s edge between his typical, terrifying sincerity and unconcealed joy in Bucky’s pain and suffering. He stares harder, trying to communicate to Steve that the eyes of Death incarnate are trained upon him. It’s super ineffective. “You’re pure unmitigated evil, you know,” he tells him.

“No,” Steve says, “I’m Captain America.”

“Sam’s Captain America.”

“I’m an innocent citizen going about my daily life.”

“You’re a menace to society.”

“I like your face in all its forms,” Steve says, and Bucky stops short. No matter what Steve tells himself, the man has never known how to fight fair. 

“The worst part is that you’re not even joking,” Bucky finally says.

“I’m partly joking,” Steve replies.

“Not the main part,” Bucky says, and sighs, turning to where his own twisted expression is painted onto their beautiful wall. “Does it really make you think of homecoming?”

“I mean, it also makes me laugh.” Steve takes a step closer, putting himself between Bucky’s spread thighs. “But yes,” he says, leaning in hopefully.

Bucky pulls a face at him.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to all the mods who work hard to make the CapRBB an amazing platform for collaboration. Thank you also to [jupiter2012](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jupiter2012), the lovely artist whose work inspired this fic, for letting me tuck her art under my arm like a football and run off with it in a totally random direction. Finally, thanks to [gracelesso](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gracelesso) and [girlbookwrm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlbookwrm), who were kind enough to beta read this and knock some sense into both me and it.
> 
> Questions, comments, and kudos are always appreciated—there is up-to-date contact info in my profile, come say hi!


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